Clean beaches are a 'shore' thing under Turtle Watch's eye

Volunteers with the Longboat Key Turtle Watch are celebrating the return of their Adopt-a-Shore signage as their busy sea turtle nesting season continues.

By Dana Kampa
| 5:00 a.m. July 22, 2026

Mother-daughter duo Bridgette, left, and Giana Clark make a doubly positive difference in their community by monitoring sea turtle nests and clearing litter from the beach as volunteers with the Longboat Key Turtle Watch. The group recently celebrated seeing their new "Adopt A Shore" signage.

Longboat Key
Neighbors

Longboat Key Turtle Watch volunteers on patrol keep a keen watch for flipper tracks from expectant sea turtle mothers and trails from recently hatched babies heading out to sea, but they also keep an eye out for any trash.

Members celebrated the reinstallation of their "Adopt A Shore" signage, which was previously knocked out by hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024. Their efforts to keep Longboat Key's shores clean this year coincides with a slightly better sea turtle nesting season than the year they lost that signage.

LKTW President Cyndi Seamon said the group is overjoyed to see the sign back up at the Longboat Beach access point on Gulfside Road 6399.

Besides recognizing the double work volunteers put in through their collaborative work with Keep Manatee Beautiful, the sign also serves as a reminder to beachgoers to do their part in keeping Longboat's shores safe and clean.

For a pandemic-era at-home craft, Bridgette Clark turned abandoned beach toys and litter into a turtle sculpture, with goggles serving as a face.

Seamon said Turtle Watch volunteers often see several visitors picking up trash as they go, and she appreciates their efforts to "keep our beach and waterways clean for critters and us."

Seamon thanked Manatee County and Longboat Key Public Works officials, who also help out when volunteers find trash that is too heavy for them alone to move.

Resident Bridgette Clark is a longtime volunteer with the Turtle Watch, and she helps coordinate monthly beach cleanups in the off-season.

Under drizzly skies, she and her daughter, 16-year-old Giana, did their part Friday morning on the beach bearing the new signs — as soon as thunderstorms safely passed out to sea.

The pair checked about 30 marked turtle nests while scanning the rain-flattened sand for marks of any false crawls or other useful data. They also, of course, picked up any trash they saw along the way.

Clark has a way of finding the whimsy in community service projects. She turned abandoned beach toys and other litter into a sculpture of a turtle as an at-home family craft while navigating social restrictions during the peak of the pandemic.

Certified Longboat Key Turtle Watch volunteer Bridgette Clark, while toting her reusable trash collection bag, tallies data on a sea turtle nest.

There wasn't much litter on the beach Friday morning beyond broken glass and rope fragments. Bridgette and Giana were kept plenty busy though, especially when excavating two hatched-out nests.

The first held an immediate surprise as Bridgette, a certified handler, uncovered five live hatchlings stuck just beneath the surface of the sand. Working carefully yet deliberately, she etched out the seashell fragments from around their minute faces and flippers.

She also uncovered one hatchling that didn't survive, 61 hatched eggshells, 12 unhatched eggs, and nine turtles that had pipped but didn't survive.

The second nest had 73 hatched eggshells, eight unhatched, and only one that pipped without making it out.

"Getting to release them is really the reward," she reflected after inspecting the five stragglers.

Mid-season stats

The sea turtle hatching season spans until the end of October, though the rate of nests being laid diminishes well before then.

Per Mote Marine's nest report for July 5-11, surveyors tallied 115 loggerhead nests and three green turtle nests on Longboat Key. That brings the year's total to 1,116 nests on the key, along with 1,721 "false crawls."

Bridgette said volunteers noticed mother turtles making multiple journeys up the beach without laying, as evidenced by the unique flipper pattern some leave in the sand.

Certified Longboat Key Turtle Watch volunteer Bridgette Clark counts the number of hatched and unhatched eggs remaining in a sea turtle nest on Longboat Key.

Only a few seconds after emerging from the nest, with a helping hand, the hatchlings start to scamper.

Volunteers also noted multiple instances of hatchlings heading the opposite direction of the shore, which most often occurs when non-turtle-friendly lights outshine the moonlight they instinctively follow.

This week's nest statistics fall slightly behind the same week last year, which came to 137 loggerhead nests and three green turtle nests.

Last year set record highs for the number of recorded nests though, and, so far, this season is a bit better than 2024's.

Bridgette did say some nests seem to be hatching earlier in the season than average, and it remains to be seen what will happen in the final months of the season.

Volunteers keep track of the nests with wooden stakes. In the wake of last weekend's stormy weather, the Turtle Watch sent out a public reminder not to touch unburied eggs or stick fallen stakes upright again.

"Instead, kindly lay (the stakes) down near the dunes so that our volunteers can see them, but they are safe from washing away," LKTW wrote in a social media post.

author

Dana Kampa

Dana Kampa is the Longboat Key neighbors reporter for the Observer. She first ventured into journalism in her home state of Wisconsin, going on to report community stories everywhere from the snowy mountains of Washington State to the sunny shores of the Caribbean. She has been a writer and photographer for more than a decade, covering what matters most to readers.